Top 500 Islamic financial institutions

Despite a fall in total assets, The Banker's 2015 survey of the Top Islamic Financial Institutions indicates that the market is continuing to move in the right direction, with sharia-compliant institutions improving access to and delivery of services, developing microfinance services, and forming stronger strategic partnerships across Asia.

Despite high demand for sharia-compliant finance, a lack of expertise and services tailored to SMEs has resulted in significant underfunding of such businesses. Four specialists from the Islamic finance world look at how to make up for this shortfall.

There has been a spike in the number of sukuk issued outside the Muslim world. But while demand is up, there remains a significant number of regulatory and operational obstacles in issuing these sharia-compliant bonds.

The sharp fall in Gulf property markets has dampened confidence in a market that many expected to be relatively immune to the global financial crisis. But sharia-compliant assets are still growing, and perhaps tougher times will encourage a more sophisticated industry.

The aftermath of the crisis has seen the reputation of conservative sharia banking soar. Four experts in the sector look at how this falling into favour is likely to affect sharia finance's short-term and long-term prospects.

HSBC Amanah's chief executive officer talks to Stephen Timewell about the developments of Islamic finance in Asia and how Malaysia is shaping up to be a key market for HSBC Amanah, and Islamic finance in general.

The deputy CEO of HSBC Amanah, Razi Fakih talks to Stephen Timewell about how the bank is balancing its focus between key traditional Islamic finance countries and products, and expanding into less well established areas.